But, secondly, there is a serious risk that if the mind be fastened on things external in some way connected with, but yet distinct from the substance of Revelation, it may turn out that these external things cannot hold the ground on which they have been placed.  They have to be given up by force at last, when they ought to have been given up long before.  And when given up they too often tear away with them part of the strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only the buttress outside but a part of the living framework.  It is distinctly the fault of religious, not of scientific men, that there was once a great contest between the Bible and Astronomy, that there has since been a great contest between the Bible and Geology, that there is still a great contest between the Bible and Evolution.  In no one of these cases was the Revelation contained in the Bible in danger, but only the interpretation commonly put on the Bible.  It is easy long afterwards to condemn the opponents of Galileo and speak of their treatment of him and his teaching as fanaticism and bigotry; and such condemnation has not unfrequently been heard from the very lips that nevertheless denounced the teaching of the geologists.  But in all these cases the principle has been the same, and believers have insisted that the Bible itself was gone unless their interpretation of it was upheld.  And the mischief is double.  For many believers, and more especially unlearned believers, instead of gently helping one another to form the necessary modification of their view of the Bible teaching, instead of endeavouring to find the way out of the perplexity and to disentangle the true spiritual lesson from the accessories which are no part of itself, insisted that it must be all or nothing, and prepared for themselves a very severe trial.  There was no doctrine involved whatever; there was nothing at stake on which the spiritual life depended.  The duty to be patient, to enquire carefully, to study the other side, to wait for light, was as plain as any duty could be.  But all this was forgotten in a somewhat unreasoning impulse to resist an assault on the faith.  And there cannot be a doubt that on all these occasions many believers have been seriously shaken by slowly finding out that the position they have taken is untenable.  When men have to give up in such circumstances they generally give up far more than they need, and in some cases an unreasonable resistance has been followed by an equally unreasonable surrender.  And while believers have thus prepared a stumblingblock for themselves they have put quite as great a stumblingblock before others.  For students of Science, informed by instant voices all around that they must choose between their Science and the Bible, knowing as they did that their Science was true, and supposing that the lovers and defenders of the Bible best knew what its teaching was, had no choice as honest men but to hold the truth as far as they possessed it and to give up the Bible in order to maintain their Science.  It was a grievous injury inflicted on them; and though some among them might deserve no sympathy, there were some whom it was a great loss to lose.